Founding father and first Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying, “There are only two things certain in life: death and taxes.” While people might not like death and taxes, they do like certainty. That’s especially true for mailers.
Worksharing – U.S. Postal Service program of reduced postage rates to mailers that take on mail preparation or distribution tasks it would otherwise have to do – was once an innovative idea; but it is now the norm in postal operations. Indeed, 85 percent of the market-dominant mail volume the Postal Service processes is workshared mail. Mailers perform everything from applying barcodes to entering mail closer to the destination in return for lower rates.
It seems a lost piece of mail isn’t too different from losing your hat at school. In both cases, you’ll want to check the lost and found bin. For the U.S. Postal Service, that would be the Mail Recovery Center (MRC) in Atlanta, its official lost and found department. Known at one time as the Dead Letter Office, the Mail Recovery Center works to reunite undeliverable packages and letters with either sender or recipient.
It was another eventful year in the postal world. We saw 2015 open with mail service problems and a delayed price increase making news, and things never really quieted down from there. Speculation about Amazon’s intentions in the delivery industry reached a fever pitch in the latter part of 2015, and the Postal Service Board of Governors got more ink in December than all months combined when the board dropped to a single appointed member.
Pushing the Envelope wishes our readers a joyful holiday season and a prosperous new year. We will take a break this week, but we encourage you to read over the past year’s blogs and let us know what you think about any of the wide-ranging topics we covered in 2015. We post comments as they come in, even if you comment on a blog that ran years ago.
On January 4 we will share our annual list of the Top 10 Postal Stories of the Year – one of our most popular blogs. As always, we look forward to your comments and insights.
Mail collection boxes are practically as American as apple pie. They also seem to be disappearing as quickly as mom’s homemade apple pie.
Nationally, the number of collection boxes declined by more than 12,000 in the past 5 years. Some customers have complained the U.S. Postal Service...
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Neither the Internet nor smartphones can hold advertising mail down. Even with digital advertising growing at a rapid pace over the past 20 years, advertising mail has kept its same share of the market — around 10 to 12 percent.
What’s advertising mail’s secret?
Well, besides the...
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There was a time when, if you lived in Spokane, Bing Crosby might have sold you stamps across a post office counter. If you lived in Chicago, Walt Disney might have delivered your mail – or maybe Rock Hudson, if you were just up the road in nearby Winnetka. More recently, before he starred in...
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We are conducting an audit to verify the accuracy of clerk and mail handler costs attributed to products and services. The Postal Service categorizes all costs as either attributable costs, which are directly or indirectly related to products, or institutional costs, which are not related to...
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The U.S. Postal Service uses highway contracts routes (HCRs) to transport mail between plants, post offices, or other designated points where mail is received or dispatched. HCRs are contracts with independent drivers to travel specified routes. Postal Service policy states HCRs must be surveyed...
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The Mobile Delivery Device (MDD) is the latest handheld device to be used by Postal Service carriers to track package activities in real time. The MDDs access a wireless network for real-time tracking, thereby creating package visibility that is essential for the Postal Service to maintain and...
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